


The Conception of Spring

by Iyatiku



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Angst, Reunion, Stark Siblings - Freeform, Winterfell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 18:55:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11766231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iyatiku/pseuds/Iyatiku
Summary: Sansa’s room is nothing of what Arya expects, although upon further consideration, the image she has in her head of her sister doesn’t quite match up to the imposing figure that greets her at the doorway.





	The Conception of Spring

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! It’s been a very long time since I’ve written anything Westeros related but call me inspired following 704. Obviously, spoiler alert if you aren’t caught up. I wanted to write something sweet following the Stark Sisters’ reunion and this sort of fills a hole I’ve had since I started writing ASOIAF fic back in 2012 (that’s 5 years ago yikes) I hope you enjoy!

Sansa’s room is nothing of what Arya expects, although upon further consideration, the image she has in her head of her sister doesn’t quite match up to the imposing figure that greets her at the doorway.

“I hope you don’t mind.” The younger says frankly.

“Of course I don’t.” Sansa frowns and steps aside.

“You used to.” Arya reminds her, taking small steps into the tower room. A movement she knows doesn’t at all correlate with her boisterous attitude.

“Well back then I had all sorts of secrets and mysteries.” She reaches over to gently fold a cloak over her arm and reposition it on the back of a chair. The room is, to Arya’s surprise, not entirely neat. Befitting of a child, with the candles half dead on their perches, clothes strewn here and there. Arya even notes the two empty glasses beside her bed.

“You had company?” She arches an eyebrow and settles next to the window. She can see the edge of the courtyard from here, but mostly she can see the sky. It almost feels as though she’s atop the world looking out on the North like this. The familiarity melts down her spine like the snowflakes falling just a pane of glass away.

It may not look like the room of a lady, but there is no doubt that Sansa Stark knows the restrictions of her rule.  _Perhaps this window offers her freedom_ , Arya thinks.

“No.” The older sighs, and slouches down onto her bed. “I don’t let anyone in here to clean outside of my presence so…” she looks around. “It built up I suppose.”

“Sansa Stark.” Arya says in her most astonished voice, “I suppose you even dress yourself now too.”

“I do, actually.”

“Seven hells - I don’t believe you!”

“Oh shut up, I’m not crippled, I can dress myself.”

“If Robb were around to hear that.”

“He’d never let me hear the end of it.” Sansa is smiling, for a second, a warm second. One where Arya feels herself slip into the warm skin of her younger self like a warg. But the fit is too tight, and though the smile suits her sister’s face, it simpers away in the thick silence her last statement leaves behind. “But he’s not.”

Arya doesn’t reply to that.

“Bran says you saw him. After.” Her words are cautious, but there’s an edge there, something like desperation. She’s clutching a piece of cloth in her hands, pulling it through her fingers over and over. It’s almost more disconcerting than the stillness, and Arya is so accustomed to that now. Stillness brings peace, and movement is her informant, teaching her. She tries her hardest not to trap that small action into her memory, doesn’t want to hold a piece of Sansa in her head like that, but it’s difficult. Her sister is a stranger now, and too long has Arya’s mind belonged to those with poisoned intentions.

“I did.”

Sansa nods.

After a second, Arya reaches into her tunic and pulls out a small bundle wrapped in hardy northern sackcloth. She steps carefully over to the bed and settles down onto it, placing the bundle between them. Sansa looks at it for a moment, then up at Arya.

“A peace offering.” She explains, “For calling you an idiot.”

She thinks Sansa smiles again. “Which time?”

“Don’t make me take it back.”

She does smile then, reaching forward to untie the little knot, let the bundle fall open in front of her. A look of calm surprise, then perhaps sadness. Her fingers are dripping with sadness when she picks the gift up.

“Lemoncakes.”

“They used to be your favourite.”

“A lot has changed,” Sansa observes, lifting it to her mouth to take a small bite. Then a bigger bite. Then she shoves the whole thing into her mouth until her cheeks are almost bursting. Arya watches on with stunned surprise, “But lemoncakes are still my favourite.”

They laugh then, and Arya shoves a cake into her mouth too, and they’re spilling crumbs all over the furs on Sansa’s bed, and outside snow is falling but inside is warm and aching with happiness. They laugh until they’re winded; flat on their backs, looking up at the canopy with heat of joy and grief and familiarity in their eyes.

It isn’t a moment that’s built to last, and slowly Arya is learning that change isn’t as fickle as she once presumed. There may be barely a foot between them in this moment but the distance of a world has been conceived by draughts of misfortune, doomed to exist eternally as the pregnant pauses that have haunted them since their reunion. Arya wonders, not for the first time, how they can be at such odds when they have never been less than two entirely polarized figures. She knows Sansa was watching, from above the practice yard. Her and Brienne. She knows Sansa understands there’s no going back.

In the quiet however, her sister moves a hand to hover over her own, and then their fingers are laced together between them. Like a bridge. A meeting point. What would have been called a compromise when they were children and is now a symbol of time and…

Perhaps hope.

“I suppose you can’t wait to see Jon,” Sansa breathes. Arya rolls her head to watch her sister blinking up at the ceiling. Her expression is blank. Her face is Lady Sansa’s. Lady Stark’s. The Lady of Winterfell’s. In her own way, Sansa had become no-one too. Arya allows herself a moment of nostalgia, and it hurt her chest more than any blow ever has.

She’s never wished that for her sister.

“Is he still as grim as always?”

When Sansa turns her head, her smile is younger than the buds of spring.


End file.
